A Movie About the New York Times Reporters Who Broke the Harvey Weinstein Story Is in the Works

Entertainment

The New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story—Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey—will be the focus of a movie about how they uncovered the allegations.

According to Deadline, Annapurna and Plan B (Brad Pitt’s production company) have obtained the rights to Kantor’s and Twohey’s story, and yes, the project is already being likened to Spotlight:

The thrust of the film isn’t Weinstein or his scandal. This is about an all-women team of journalists who persevered through threats of litigation and intimidation, to break a game-changing story, told in a procedural manner like Spotlight and All the President’s Men.
Kantor and Twohey just shared the Pulitzer Prize for their explosive reporting alongside Ronan Farrow, whose equally superb dispatches in The New Yorker began dropping days after that first NYT scoop. It was the most seismic journalism-driven Hollywood scandal since the days of David Begelman, and much of the intrigue involved the ways that Weinstein tried unsuccessfully to keep the stories from being published.

The New York Times recently signed a deal with Anonymous Content to broker deals related to TV and movie rights. After The Post gave all the Pentagon Papers glory to The Washington Post, perhaps there’s more pressure to make sure films about dramatic journalism include the New York Times. Deadline notes that in contrast to Spotlight, “Plan B and Annapurna will be getting into the Weinstein saga in real time, much the way that Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow did on Annapurna’s Zero Dark Thirty.”

 
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